PetaPixel

The entrance is a wet hole in the earth little bigger than an animal burrow, obscured by thorny brush in a secluded wood in northeastern France. I’m following Jeff Gusky, a photographer and physician from Texas who has explored dozens of underground spaces like this one…

Here, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War—which began a hundred years ago this summer—German military engineers would take turns sitting in total silence, listening intently for the slightest sound of enemy tunnelers. Muffled voices or the scraping of shovels meant that a hostile mining team might be only yards away, digging an attack tunnel straight toward you.